Ante P said:
And the next step: they ship Ti4800 and the nv30 arrives late.
Only problem is that Ti4800 seems to be a crap product. If it's true that the only addition will be AGP 8x (I even heard that it might be clocked at Ti4400 speeds) then it's simply garbage.
I for one am glad not to have wade through all of the "six month product cycle" nonsense anymore--it's really quite refreshing, actually, to see reality come back into the picture and not have to wade through that crap when reading a review. When nVidia first pulled the "six-month-product-cycle stunt" way back when it was running against 3dfx, I said then that this policy was one of the dumbest I'd ever heard of and was destined to bite them severely in the rear end one day...
It appears that day has come (although nVidia has by no means kept to the 6-month cycle since 3dfx, this will be the first time it's been 6-months--or more, we'll see--late with a product.)
nVidia has traditionally been aggressive with GPU processes and advanced ram types, but I think this is one time where the gamble has backfired. Against 3dfx at the time of the GF1, nVidia went to .18 microns when 3dfx stayed at .25 for the V5 because of yield worries. Anyway--the gamble's paid off for nVidia every time except for this one. Which does raise the question--how much of the delay is attributable to TSMC's .13 micron process difficulties and how much because of design problems with the nv30? I'm tempted to think that nVidia completely misjudged the viability of TSMC's .13 process and also the availability of extremely fast DDRII ram technology. But I do imagine there were design issues as well.
As far as outfitting the Ti4x00 series for AGP x8, I think this was an unanticipated, last-minute effort when nVidia realized nv30 was not going to make it for the near term and that it needed some "AGP x8" products in the market (you know how people are about higher numbers) to compete (with ATI.) That's why I think they exist at all--making them AGP x8 compliant is no big deal as it merely requires a redesign of the PCB--and not much of one, or at least not one particularly complicated. Something it could do in a hurry, in other words. Basically, the Ti4800, or whatever, is a stop-gap designed to last for a few months before nv30 starts shipping. IMO.